I have spent years calling out misogyny and sexual violence within the police service, but the story of David Carrick left me speechless.
Carrick has served in the Met for 20 years, and is now an armed officer in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command – an elite, sought-after job that requires extensive vetting. And yet he admitted on Monday to 49 counts of sexual offences against 12 women over 17 years, including 24 counts of rape and three of false imprisonment. The physical and verbal abuse the women endured was sickening – he forced some to stay in a cramped cupboard in his house for hours at a time, calling one his “slave”.
Not only did that vetting process fail, but the force was told about eight alleged attacks on or clashes with women by Carrick between 2000 and 2021 and took no action, after the women involved withdrew from investigations or refused to make formal complaints. His job helped him to dominate and frighten his victims: prosecutors said that Carrick told women they would not be believed because he was a police officer. Disgusting doesn’t begin to cover it.
Red flags were ignored again and again. One of the allegations was made during his probation period, but he passed. In 2011, Carrick should have had his once-a-decade vetting refresher, but this was somehow delayed for six years. In 2017, he was given enhanced counter-terrorism vetting, and passed. This all raises huge questions about what information was shared at those vettings, and what understanding there was of how predatory sex offenders operate.
What’s the point of these procedures if they can’t stop someone like Carrick? Waving through those who exhibit this risky and criminal behaviour makes them feel invincible – that they can continue at will. And tragically, awfully, Carrick did just that.
DCI Iain Moor of Hertfordshire police, who led the investigation that finally brought Carrick to justice, has said it was “unbelievable” that these crimes could have been carried out by a serving police officer. I have to disagree. It’s appalling and sickening, but it’s far from unbelievable – just look at the serving Met officer who murdered Sarah Everard. The narrative of an “outlier”, “bad apple”, a “wrong’un” passes over the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong within the institution. I was abused by fellow officers during my time in the force – it isn’t a safe place to be. Who’s going to believe you if you make a report? And if police are abusing their position to exploit those they are charged to protect, how can the institution be trusted?
The challenge for policing is to change how they think about their colleagues, about how predatory sex offenders operate, and about victims. Police have got to start learning about what it is to be a victim of sexual offences, what it is to be a victim of domestic abuse when the perpetrator is a police officer – such as understanding that if victims don’t pursue complaints, that isn’t necessarily because the offence didn’t happen; that there may have been a power dynamic at play. They’ve got to alter their mindset.
The Met has said it is now reviewing every past claim of domestic abuse or sexual offence against about 1,000 of the Met’s 45,000 officers and staff, but changing the culture also means recruiting people differently, training people differently, vetting people differently, and holding people to account differently – which may well mean sacking people much more readily. And when things go wrong, they must be properly investigated – which may well mean externally, rather than from within the force.
I found that many of those who serve in the military and then come to the police, as Carrick did, are used to a very male-dominated, macho – and, I would argue – misogynistic culture, and may then seek out a role that gives them power, status, and allows that misogynistic behaviour to carry on unchecked. Policing needs to change those attitudes through higher professional standards.
Carrick’s actions would have been just as appalling from a new recruit as from one with 20 years’ service, but what makes this story so particularly awful is that policing had the chance to do something about it – and turned not just one blind eye over the years but many, utterly failing those victims. And that’s why women don’t trust the police.
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